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Muriel still looked troubled as Aziraphale waved them goodbye and the lift door slipped shut, but he was giddy in his optimism, tossing them a quick wave.
“Well,” he said to the silvery doors more so than the demon behind him, “I think that went rather well.”
“Definitely could have gone worse,” Crowley replied drily.
Aziraphale chucked. “Your bee theory was brilliant. Do you think it would work just as well in Hell if I were to, to–”
He had turned, eager to slip back into the role of best friend sharing a joke, everything being more or less the same as things had been Before.
But Crowley was so close, arms spread, braced against the lift walls. He filled the space as he filled every space, bright and intense as a raging fire. Dark and smoldering like summer heat.
And all the dry, lonely, dusty parts of Aziraphale, packed in an ugly grey version of his usual attire, strangled with a hideous necktie that wasn't quite the same honey-gold as Crowley’s eyes, caught, kindled, and burned.
Aziraphale had been doing so well, he’d thought, keeping those Feelings tightly under wraps in his chest, in a box that said do not open until the world is saved. A box made of his own hurt, his own defensiveness, and his own weakness.
Because part of him knew, even as his schemes started to fall apart and he realized how terribly out of his depth he'd become and how the world he so adored was put at greater and greater risk, that if he went to Crowley, he would burn. Like this. In a fire worse than Hellfire.
And he wouldn’t even want to stop.
He tried. Tried to smother the first tongues of heat in his skin. But they had already sucked all the oxygen from his lungs, greedy for fuel.
“–to… oh my…” he gasped.
Crowley was so lovely, and he had missed him so much.
The demon’s grim countenance softened, a touch fond. Nostalgic, really, perhaps thinking about all the other times Aziraphale's breath and good sense had been knocked away by the force of his latest fashions and devilishly good looks.
But then, the corner of his lip curled down. “Like what you see?”
The line was flirtatious, but the tone was bitter.
“Pardon?” Aziraphale asked, eyes caught on those lips, wishing he didn't remember how sweet they were.
“Me,” he said, “in white.”
Aziraphale blinked. His field of view pulled back, taking in not the imposing presence or the wonderfully handsome face and form of his most beloved friend, but the trappings of his disguise.
“You aren't in white,” he replied, trying to hastily re-erect the fortifications of his heart, wringing his hands to try and will away the tremble and the urge to reach out, to touch those new clothes.
It's true, Crowley wasn't in white. If fact, in the right light, one might think he hadn't changed at all, still sharp as ever, sleek and modern. Tight trousers, smart jacket, ever-present neck-scarf thing that Aziraphale had never had the heart to inquire too deeply about lest Crowley decide to stop wearing it. It was unique, fetching, and Aziraphale had harbored many fantasies of grabbing Crowley by it and pulling him into–
He cleared his throat and wished for some holy water to douse the firestorm inside him.
“An angel again,” Crowley continued, easily sidestepping Aziraphale's attempt at deflecting. “It's what you wanted, wasn't it?”
Angelic? Hardly. Crowley wasn't in white. He was in gold.
An idol he longed to sink to his knees before in blasphemous worship.
A treasure he coveted, wanted to hoard close with greedy, grasping fingers, to hide away where none of the machinations of Heaven or Hell could find.
A prize Aziraphale was not worthy to claim.
Not yet, he told himself.
The only thing white about him were twin streaks of snow at his temples – an attempt, perhaps, at imitating the heavenly marks that some angels wore: silver scales or glittering sigils or a hideous golden cross within the teeth. But to Aziraphale, it only evoked the idea of devil horns and the passage of time, of six thousand years with Aziraphale leaving a subtle mark on his eternal, unchanging body.
“You never understood what I wanted,” he said softly, eyes wandering from the elegant waves of those false horns, down to the beloved snake tattoo that still clung to Crowley’s jaw, down further to those fiendish lips. “Making you anything like them was the last thing on my mind. I wanted you there to help me. And you are. Angel or no.”
But taking in Crowley's disguise, it did awaken that old guilt. How he had inadvertently doomed the angel he’d never known the name of, that sweet star-maker who shielded him from scattering space-stuff and cheered with unrestrained delight at the marvel of creation.
For a moment, he saw himself in the reflection of Crowley’s coppery sunglasses. His grey suit almost black. His pale hair tinged with a fiery hue.
What he might look like if he had Fallen instead. What they might look like if their roles were reversed.
Would they still be here, together, at the end of the world? Would an angelic version of Crowley come to… to feel what he felt for a demonic version of Aziraphale?
Would his guilt be less if he had condemned the star-maker to six thousand years of submission to the Heavenly host instead of the tortures and machinations of Hell?
He realized he didn't know. He always assumed it would be, but spending these last few years wearing a tie like a noose around his neck, wearing a false smile as brittle as a cheap papier-mache mask, wearing this horrid shade of managerial grey, made him realize that Heaven was its own form of torture.
One he was almost glad to have spared Crowley.
“You do look handsome,” he added, feeling the heat he couldn't contain engulf his face as he forced himself to look away. Not that there was anything else in this lift to look at. “As always. That also has nothing to do with you being, well, looking like an angel. I never stopped knowing you – the real you – were there,” he dared to reach up, to hook a fingertip over the corner of rose and gold sunglasses, drawing them down to meet saffron, serpentine eyes, “underneath.”
He heard Crowley chuckle, and the sound drew his gaze to the twitch of a vain, proud smirk on his lips. His tempting lips. “Been here the whole time,” he said, “waiting for you to catch up.”
Then the lift chimed, and cool London air rushed into the space, washing over him like a sudden wave.
“Earth,” it chirped in its robotic voice.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer,” Aziraphale said, pressing the glasses back over the bridge of Crowley’s nose. “Only a little bit longer, though. I promise.”